Monday, August 13, 2012

"Give me your tired........

“Give me your tired, your poor,–”

In 1883 Emma Lazarus, a young Sephardic Jewish woman,
appalled by the massacres perpetrated against Russian Jews in particular and
Europeans in general, inscribed a sonnet entitled “The New Colossus”so as to trust that the United
States of America, thanks to its laws and customs, had become the promised land
to anyone who had faced persecuted, mistreatment or massacres in any part of
the world¬– in Europe above all. Converging here: all of the cultures, creeds,
customs, and languages of the globe––the ideal destiny and heaven for the
oppressed. The United States of America where all were forged in a crucible
swaying upon tolerance, acceptance, and respect for others and their
individualities.One of the verses from
said sonnet, since 1903, has graced the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty--
that eternal symbol of welcome to these shores. "Give me your tired, your
poor--Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...”Emma Lazarus had always taken
pride in her Jewishness of noble Sephardic stock, as well as being a proponent
for the creation of a national homeland for Jews in Israel; even prior to the
word Zionism having been placed en vogue by Hertzel and his supporters.It is the irony of fate that after her death,
her sister--wary of¬ an anti-Semitic backlash--prohibited the inclusion of
‘-all things Jewish’, from the collected works edition of the poems of Emma
Lazarus, which appeared in 1889.To what
purpose do I highlight Emma Lazarus and her famous poem?Aside from that pride I feel of belonging to
her creed, I am overcome with nostalgia and with vigilance for the country that
shall be inherited by my grandchildren.It is so different to that which was conceived by the founding fathers
and, to such an extent, that it approaches the opposite of their stated
purpose.

From time immemorial, we are prone to reject the other.It is no wonder that the good book teaches
“Do not ill-treat the stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in
Egypt”- recalling how we should treat the other, who lives among us.This is the moral core of the Americans:
these precepts being accorded by the progeny of Anglo-Saxons, faithful to their
Judeo-Christian form.What has become of
some of their progeny? From whence these men, who seeing themselves as of
superior race, bestow upon themselves the right to harass their
countrymen--based on their complexion, because of their mother tongues from
other lands, or because they profess a religious belief that is not the same as
the national majority?

It has become less out-of-the-ordinary (so much that one
even becomes accustomed to it), to discover the tales of acts such as the
recent attack against a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, perpetrated by a white
supremacist, where six people perished and another three were injured,
including a police officer who answered the call to defend the victims.

It is a certainty that September 11th was a hate crime
against our nation by Muslim terrorists, just as the attacks on Madrid and London,
yet these do not justify that--in the supposedly most civilized nation in the
world—indiscriminate attacks are conducted against Muslims, Sikhs, and even
against Arab-Americans of other religious denominations—; the vast majority of
whom reached our land seeking refuge and fleeing the barbarity of which they
were the victims in their places of origin.

According to the United States Department of Defense, as of
September 2011, there have occurred more than 800 incidents of violence,
threats, acts-of-vandalism and arson aimed towards Americans of Arab descent,
Muslims, Sihks, South Americans, Asians, and other people who, when one
considers their attributes, originated in the Middle East.That is intolerable.

In South Florida--where there are more than 38 spoken
languages and dialects--we thrive amidst an inter-connectedness that is
essentially harmonious between Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Santeria,
Spiritualists, Sikhs, Agnostics or Atheists, whites, blacks, Asians, Europeans,
the indigenous, Hispanic-Americans-et al-. That’s the strength of sharing that
we have learned to accept by being ourselves, as citizens of this great
nation.Lamentably, we can prove the
lower the diversity: the wider the ignorance and more frequent the occurrence,
of hate crime.

The solution lies in education.None are born hating; someone teaches
them.The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
and other institutions have educational programs that are acquirable for all
schools that wish to participate, as it were.Our county school board and many private Christian schools are already
including it.That is the path.